Progress report for ONC24-151
Project Information
REAP Food Group has created a local Wholesale Ready Marketplace (WholesaleReady.org), with funding from a USDA LFPP grant, to facilitate purchasing wholesale quantities of local produce and value-add products by local institutional buyers in southern Wisconsin. The Marketplace launched in July 2022, and the first cohort of 10 farmers are onboarding to the Marketplace in order to open for sales in Spring 2024.
Through feedback from the first cohort of farmers, we are improving our onboarding process to include resources farmers who need additional support to be ready for wholesale. These resources include additional technical training and on-farm support in implementing best practices for wholesale production, and requires more time commitment from our staff and farmers to support the transition to wholesale production. This need was disproportionately shared by black, Hmoob, and indigenous farmers who are growing specialty crops.
The Wholesale Ready Marketplace is a critical piece of the infrastructure of the local food system in southern Wisconsin, and can potentially contribute $1,300,000 of locally-produced food to our food system while supporting the growth of diverse, sustainable farms.
- Support onboarding eight farmers onto the Wholesale Ready Marketplace through technical training and on-farm support to implement best practices in wholesale production.
- Learn from the experiences of farmers transitioning to selling their produce into the wholesale market to develop case studies to share with other farmers.
Cooperators
Research
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
The group of 8 farmers that we are working with on this grant are onboarding in two cohorts - the first cohort of four farmers was identified summer 2024, and we will meet with them through March of 2025. In the beginning of April 2025 we will onboard a second cohort of four farmers to the program. The four farmers we are working with this year are a part of that first cohort, and they have completed the intake form (created under a previous grant), which is attached here - Wholesale Onboarding. The second cohort of farmers will include some who have already filled out this onboarding. Our first cohort includes an apple farmer, a pork farmer, a veggie farmer, and a tortilla producer.
We have been working over the last year to collect feedback as well as provide technical support to our first Farmer cohort in the usage of our Wholesale Readiness Platform. We have had 12 meetings with our cohort of four farmers. In a few of the first meetings, we got their feedback on the usability of the website. The website was created using a previous grant, but using their feedback we implemented changes to make it easier to use for the farmers as we supported them in the onboarding process and learned what each farmer and each crop needs in terms of website support. Following those initial meetings we have had one-on-one training sessions with them to go over the process of listing products, as well as meetings to discuss their current selling profile and how they wish to expand.
We've created one-pagers on those farmers to profile them on our Wholesale site as sellers (Wholesale Profiles (1) - one example, the rest are uploaded on our website), as well as for a few other farms in our network that are listing products on the website. We have also created onboarding guidelines (Profile Best Practices) that we are working on translating into Spanish. We have met with three of the four farmers in our cohort to train them in our onboarding systems and assist them with listing their first products, and have done one farm tour and one small business tour to see the operations of two of our sellers up close.
All four of the participants in our first cohort can be considered 'Wholesale Ready' at this point, but they all have different levels of experience with traditional institutional sellers. Only one member of the cohort has sold to a traditional institutional seller (schools) whereas the others have sold to smaller wholesale buyers such as retailers and food security programs. We have also discussed the process of getting additional products from these sellers to a point where they can be sold wholesale. For example, our veggie farmer would like to learn more about packaging value-added products to sell wholesale, which is where we can step in and support him in that training (Condensed Notes).
In the coming months we will wrap up with our first cohort, and begin working with a new cohort of four - some of which have already been identified. We have strong relationships with our first cohort, and will continue to support them in selling on the website moving forward. We are planning on hosting a Farm to Institution Vendor Showcase by the end of the year, and will aim to include all 8 farmers from both cohorts.
Learning Outcomes
Connecting with institutional buyers
Preparation to sell wholesale
Improving farm financial tracking
Project Outcomes
Our project is connecting area institutions to local farms that grow either regeneratively or organically, and small-scale producers that buy from such farms. Building these connections is an economic benefit to our producers by introducing them to potential buyers that they had not previously connected with. Encouraging institutional purchasers to buy local has lasting environmental impacts as it decreases the footprint of their culinary programs, and supports the farmers in continuing their work as stewards of their land.